What does one do on a day off at the World Cup in Germany? See more of Germany. Everyone with a World Cup press credential gets a free first-

class train pass. So I tried to find the one corner of the country where I wouldn’t see Australian fans carrying stuffed kangaroos on their shoulders or hear “O-LEA! O-LEA, O-LEA, O-LEA!” The corner was Saarland, a little-known forested former industrial area hugging a southwest edge bordering France and Luxembourg. For Saturday’s U.S.-Italy game in Kaiserslautern, the closest hotel I could get was the Saarland capital, Saarbrucken, an hour away. (Yes, there are a few people attending the World Cup.) On a beautiful Friday afternoon in the mid-70s, I took the train up the Saar River to the village of Mettlach, right on the Luxembourg border. Once past Volklingen Hutte, a humongous abandoned foundry majestic in its sheer mass and rust, I followed the Saar as it meandered past little hamlets where cows grazed at the riverside. At every train stop I heard birds chirping – and not drunk English fans – until I came to Mettlach in 40 minutes. I walked down the quiet street to a beautiful open-air beer garden where I ate wienerschnitzel, drank Saarland beer and watched rural Germany go by. And saw Netherlands play the Ivory Coast on the bar TV. OK, so I’ve developed a little dependency problem. It’s the World Cup. Everyone here is hooked.

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